I'm Stefan, 28 years, live in Denmark. Last night I decided to dedicate myself to becoming a lucid dreamer. I know it's possible, because I will never forget that one night I had my first (and only) accidental lucid dream back some 10 or so years ago (I dreamt that I fell asleep and realized I was dreaming. I had maybe 20 minutes of very stable, half-aware lucid fun).

I'm quite spiritual, knowing hypnosis and some meditation. So far, I have never had an abundance of selfesteem, and have often found myself abbandoning attempts at spiritual lifestyles, mainly because I forget how to see and appreciate the subtle gratifications of early practice. Lucid Dreaming seems different to me - ofcourse there is no more instant gratification to this than others, but I find it much more difficult not to feel the changes when you realize something new. Gratification has more impact. I am also greatful of my past experience, proving to me just how real this is.

This morning I had the first success in the line of successes: Waking up and recalling a dream that I would have forgotten completely had I not asked my subc. "What did I dream?". Recalling dreams on command is a powerful tool. (through hypnosis, I allready know how to communicate with my subc. while awake, although it is isen't always easy. Lucid Dreaming would be the ultimate lack of distractions, and I feel that this point in my life is perfect and ideal for finally learning this skill).

I failed to make introductions short I'm very happy to have found this community and I'm looking foreward to learning and in turn help others in the time to come.

QUESTION - When writing your dream journal, how should I deal with chronology/timeline (I recalled the end of my dream first, then earlier sections came to mind. I wanted to write the journal in the right sequence, but I was affraid I'd forget a few things (or recall even earlier sections), so I just started at the end. It just felt mixed up writing backwards. How should I deal with this? )

its all about recall so I work backwards from the most recent recalled dream. Note that I did not say the last dream I said the most recent not last dream. Sometimes I got too and fro with dreams and dwell on them a little as well - enjoy them a second time

Peter

Who are you I asked, the reply "dont be silly, we are your daughers" many years before they were born

Hi and welcome to the group. I like your name, we named our son Stefan.

As far as writing down details, my advice is to not worry about chronology, just relax and write down everything you can think of that happened. As you know the details vanish quickly so just write, like your brainstorming. After you do that you can always go back and try to sort things out time-wise or you may decide that it's not that important.

I can't always remember the details of my dreams, even lucid ones. But that's not really so surprising, I forget details of waking life just as much. My memory is very short, waking and dream. Good luck and happy lucid dreaming.

Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world? Morpheus

I support what Lucidinthesky and Peter had suggested and would like to add that the more you do, the easier the recall will come with much more detail and clarity. Also, give yourself time to truely master this key to cultivating lucidity. For my practice, I didn't begin cultivating lucidity until I could recall clearly and vividly 3 or more dreams per night without effort. Have fun.

This morning I had trouble, but ended up recalling a few scenes from my dream, not much. Like the morning before, I had to thrash over to kill my clock, which seemed to cloud my recollection more than yesterday. Perhaps another arrangement for getting up is better, but I'll spent some time with this, getting a better feeling about how I manage. This skill is for life, so a week of testing shouldn't demoralize I don't like to rush myself (which is a little hard, when some beginners articles note that "you might even get lucid tonight..", hehe). I tried setting my clock to wake me after 5 hours to get those extra periods of REM sleep, but frankly, I find myself yawning my jaw off all day as a result, so I'll just start out with regular 7 hours, with the occational sleeping in That shouldn't impair my learning much, right?

Even now I find it exciting and reassuring that I do dream each and every night and that I can recall them atall (without attempts to recall, I'd say I naturally remember a dream once every 1 or 2 months, or even rarer). Does anyone know the reason why we can sometimes recall dreams (even non-lucid) effortlessly when waking up?

Also, I find it hard to imagine that we could forget a lucid dream as easily as any other dream (seeing as I still remember mine clearly from 10 years ago without ever writing it down). Is this really true?

welcome to this beautiful forum. Concerning dream recall I try to take a relaxed attitude. Last night for example I had a long non lucid dream – but I completely forgot about it! I only remember a piece of another dream that I had. I'm keeping a dream diary and I just write down, whatever I can remember. If it's much then it can sometimes be difficult to write it all down before the day really begins. What I forget doesn't bother me too much. I think that what really matters to my unconscious mind will surely reappear in one of the next dreams. While keeping a dream diary I saw for myself that important motifs of symbols appear again and again over a period of time. So I don't fuss about forgetting one dream or another. That's maybe part of the answer to the question why some dreams are remembered easily and some are forgotten. Perhaps not all of them are equally important. It may also depend on whether you wake up naturally or with an alarm clock. When you awake naturally it is as far as I know more likely to awake just after or at the and of a REM (= dream) period of sleep. So dream memory should be better. On the other hand, the alarm clock would tear you out of deepest delta sleep and then there is nothing to remember. I personally don't use an alarm clock. Over time I just got the habit of waking up at the right time (dunno how I did though...).As you might guess by now, I don't use „wake and go back to bed“ to induce lucidity, so don't trouble about that. (Just because I don't like the feeling of a clock waking me...)And yes, I forget also lucid dreams. I have at the moment one lucid dream per week (I try to increase it...). Normally, LD are easily remembered, much easier than normal dreams. But sometimes I even forget a LD. I rarely forget dreams with strong emotions, whether lucid or not. There are dreams that I will remember all my lifetime even if I didn't write them down because they were so impressive (among them especially some dreams that were rather religious visions).

I know what you mean about sleeping/waking habbits. Sometimes I use visualized self hypnosis to wake up at certain times (so far only at times where it's important for me to get out of bed at, say, 5am, avoiding sleep-in urges). When I get into the habbit of MILDs, I might aswell cultivate a sense that my alarm is redundant. The times I have the easiest recollection of dreams is when I sleep in without an alarm, I would try that sometime. I should note that I've had 2 months of jetlag up untill a week ago, when the doctor proscribed me some melatonin (I slept 6am to 3pm). I'm back to normal now, so I don't want to mess too much with my restored sleeping cycle in a way, that makes me sleep too long... just yet

I'm looking very much foreward to recognizing recurring themes and symbols So far I realize that I dream mostly of computer games and my choir (yes, that is me singing in the photo). I spent most of my time on both these things. I try to associate these activities with occational reality checks.

Also, it's good to hear that LDs seem easier to recall, once you recall you had them

Welcome! This is a great forum. Lots of fantastic information. Through the help of many in this forum I can now lucid dream fairly regular. Do a lot of reading here, continue to ask questions, it will help tremendously.